Thoughts on The Fifth Risk

Finished The Fifth Risk this week which is a new Michael Lewis book.

It was pretty short and wildly interesting book.

Michael Lewis dove into different departments of the government that I’ve at least personally heard/learned very little about despite how important they are.

He talked about the Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce and explored what they all do. That includes managing, combined something around $200B annually.

These branches of government do things like manage risk, spur innovation, and track as well as distribute weather data.

Lewis gave some overviews of what they did, shared some specific stories of impacts that they have had, and he talked about how they look right now in the age of Trump.

It made me more anti Trump, although I was talking with someone who made a good point that Lewis is pretty one-sided in this story and doesn’t talk much/at all(?) about the benefits of some of the things Trump’s doing in these departments.

The people he has put in position to run these departments, for example, are just not particularly qualified (Lewis makes a strong argument to say). And with such high stakes, it’s pretty bad that they’re not fit to be leading.

White House transition.

He talked about Trump’s transition into the White House as well. I hadn’t thought about it before, but the transition from president to president is this massively inefficient system where thousands of employees are swapped out, often for those with a different vision. Sharing data, ideas, learnings and projects can be challenging.

This is especially so in the case of Trump that seemingly had prepared his transition team close to none.

Hidden heroes.

Lewis also talked about some secret heroes in society that I didn’t know existed that are/have made massive changes in government and thus the lives of millions.

Weather, for example, wasn’t very accurately predicted predating WW2. Imagine, firstly, not knowing what the day ever had in store.

Secondly, disaster prevention, like hurricanes and tornadoes weren’t predicted. There’s still lots of work to go, but there are a select few people who are driving the change, which is inspiring

Would highly recommend

I’d highly recommend this book given how applicable it is and that it opened my eyes to things I’ve learned close to nothing about in school.

The government is doing so much, which doesn’t surprise me if I think about it, but still.

Thoughts on this review/the book in general? Comment or send me a note :)

Full reading list here